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Yew Trees

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Yew Trees

Yew Trees: An Introduction to Their Varieties and Uses

 

Yew trees, scientifically known as Taxus baccata, are a versatile and popular choice for UK gardens. From the classic English Yew to the distinctive Irish Yew, these trees thrive in our climate and are renowned for their dense foliage, easy maintenance, and suitability for various landscaping needs. Whether you’re looking for a striking standalone tree or an elegant row of hedges, yew trees provide a timeless and practical solution.

Taxonomy and Characteristics

 

Belonging to the Taxaceae family and the genus Taxus, yew trees are native to Europe, North Africa, and southwest Asia. They can grow up to 20 meters tall and feature dark green needles and bright red berries, adding year-round interest to gardens. Their dense foliage makes them a favourite for creating privacy screens and windbreaks.

Historical Significance in British Landscapes

 

Yew trees have been used in British landscapes for centuries due to their longevity, durability, and aesthetic appeal. Historically planted in churchyards and cemeteries, they symbolise eternal life. Their wood was highly valued for making longbows during the medieval period. English Yew has been integral to traditional British gardens, often forming formal hedges and topiaries in stately homes and historic gardens.

Growth Styles of Yew Trees

 

Yew trees are a great choice for parks and large landscapes due to their versatility and benefits for wildlife. English Yew can serve as a striking focal point with its broad, conical shape, while Irish Yew’s upright, columnar form is ideal for creating tall screens and accentuating pathways. Golden Yew offers a unique colour contrast with its bright foliage, and Weeping Yew adds a soft, flowing element with its cascading branches. These trees provide dense foliage that shelters birds and small mammals, while their red berries are a crucial winter food source for birds like thrushes and waxwings. Additionally, these trees support various insects year-round, contributing to a balanced ecosystem. Long-lived and low-maintenance, yews enhance both the beauty and biodiversity of any landscape.

Dense and Lush Foliage

 

Yew trees are celebrated for their dense and lush foliage, making them excellent for creating privacy screens and windbreaks. The thick greenery remains visually appealing throughout the year, providing a constant source of vibrant colour in your garden.

Versatile Landscaping Options

 

Yew trees are highly versatile in landscaping. They can be shaped into formal hedges, topiaries, or left to grow naturally as standalone trees. Their adaptability allows them to fit seamlessly into both traditional and contemporary garden designs. Additionally, they are perfect for creating elegant rows that line pathways or borders, adding structure and sophistication.

Easy Maintenance and Pruning

 

Yew trees are slow-growing, requiring less frequent pruning compared to other hedging plants. When pruning is needed, they respond well, making it simple to maintain a neat and tidy appearance. Their resilience also allows for heavy trimming and precise shaping.

Quick Growth and Longevity

 

Although they grow slowly initially, yew trees can live for hundreds of years, making them a long-term investment for your garden. Once established, they grow steadily and can quickly form dense hedges that enhance both beauty and privacy. Their longevity and robust nature mean they can be enjoyed for generations.

Low Toxicity and Safety

 

While yew trees have been known for their toxicity, many garden varieties today have lower toxicity, making them safer for family gardens. However, it’s still best to ensure that pets and children do not ingest any part of the plant.

Conclusion

 

In conclusion, yew trees from Harrod Outdoors offer a premium solution for creating beautiful, uniform hedges or striking standalone features. With varieties like English Yew and Irish Yew, you get dense foliage and immediate impact. Available in various sizes, our yew hedging units can be tailored to your garden’s needs. Choose our yew hedging units for a superior, immediate hedge solution that stands out in any landscape.

In our range of hedging, we have plants native from all around the world, in different sizes and colours and so it is important that you choose the best hedge for you and your garden. The hedging plants are available in different densities and root types, all which require different shadings and soil types that will affect the success growth rate of your hedge.

A common mistake by some customers is choosing a hedge purely based on its colours and appearance, without checking if the conditions of their garden are suitable for the hedging. This results in the hedging not growing well and the customer is left disappointed. For example, some gardens are more shaded and so hedging plants like Green Beech and Red Robin wouldn’t be ideal. There are also gardens in open areas where hedging like hornbeam won’t offer any wind protection and so a denser hedging like Leylandii would have been a better choice.

We are very proud of our design product filter on our store page that can help ensure you will receive the perfect hedge for you. The filter works by entering your garden’s information and then giving you the ideal hedging options that are guaranteed to grow well in your garden providing you maintain the hedge following our expert advice.

Hedging is a great alternative to fencing or brick walls for your garden because it adds more colour and nature to your garden, whilst being the most affordable option. Some of our smaller hedging plants can create a brilliant hedge for just under £100 and the hedging will last for years, providing you take our advice on how to maintain the hedge.

By using hedging as an alternative to brick walls and fencing for the boundaries of your garden, you can create the illusion of extra space and they can be used to create patterns and structures that will elevate your garden’s beauty.  The hedging, especially our denser species, will still offer amazing privacy for your garden, as well as wind and noise protection.

At Harrods Outdoor, we are passionate about the environment and will always encourage people to make their gardens as green as possible to help our planet and our local wildlife. Planting hedging is a great way to do this as it can provide food and shelter for birds and insects, especially for those in an urban area where the wildlife may struggle to find a home.

Including hedging to your garden can also increase both the appearance and value of your property, as research shows property has a higher price on roads containing hedging and trees. The use of it in a landscaped garden can also attract more buyers for your home.

The technique of planting hedging will differ slightly depending on the root type and the species, but often the process is the same and not too difficult. We have created these step by step instructions below to help you with the process, but as always if you have any further questions feel free to email or ring us for our help.

  1. Mark out the area where you want to plant your hedge, you can work this out by using the number of hedging plants you have and dividing it by our recommended plants per meter.
  2. When you have the chosen length of your hedge, mark it out with a bit of string so you have a straight line.
  3. Then mark out the width of you hedge, this is usually just double the width of your root system.
  4. Once you happy with how the markings look, you can dig out your trench. When digging, it’s important to dig down about double the depth of the roots of the hedging.
  5. If you can, you should enrich your soil with good organic matter and nutrients (compost, manure or a fertilising mixture will work well). This isn’t mandatory but is highly recommend for healthy strong root growth.
  6. Pack your soil down so that when you add your plants, their stems will start right where the soil starts. Be sure to remove any air pockets during this process to avoid any front damage to the plants during winter.
  7. Now add your plants, remembering to use our planting density recommendation to ensure your roots have enough space to grow without disturbing the neighbouring plants.
  8. Add the soil back around the plants so they are buried nicely underground.
  9. Finally, you should water the plants, which will help them to root into the ground faster and push any remaining air pockets to the surface, removing the risk of frost.

After care is just as important as this planting process, you need to to ensure that you plants are well watered for the first year or two until the roots go deep enough to maintain enough water by themselves. You can also add more nutrients like bone meal through the first few years to ensure the hedging has a strong growth, but if your soil is already rich in nutrients, this won’t be needed.

With bare root plants it is important to ensure that when you are planting the hedge, the ground is not frozen and if there is a delay when you’re planting them, ensure they are kept warm and the roots are kept moist. When you plant bare root hedging it is a good idea to coat the roots in a rooting gel to help the plant roots grow faster at the start of the growing season. This gel or powder can be found on https://www.ebay.co.uk,  https://www.amazon.co.uk or many garden centres as well. When planting root balls you don’t have to move the burlap or net packaging around the roots you can just plant them how they are as the burlap will dissolve over time and decay into nothing but more food for the plant.

As well as this, the planting density should always be correct because roots need enough space to absorb enough nutrients, vitamins and water, but don’t plant them too far away also as you will lose the appearance of a thick hedge. We have provided a recommended planting density for you to follow for each product to ensure you get the best growth possible.

Our larger specimens typically have a lower planting density, around 2 or 3 plants per metre. But for our smaller plants we recommend the planting density to be around 5 to 7 plants per metre. This is because our bigger plants cover a much larger area so there are fewer needed to create the ideal thick hedge you desire. Our larger plants are slightly more expensive than our smaller ones, but it is noteworthy that you will need to plant less larger plants per meter so you can save money by buying less plants in the first place.

 

 

We are proud of our efficient delivery service of our hedging, where we take the time to water and feed the plants before they are packaged for delivery to ensure the plants are of the highest standard whilst still keeping our prices low. We always have multiple people working on our website and phones to ensure our customers are always updated and able to have their questions heard. We are also proud of our eco-friendly standards, in which we make sure we re-use our pots, reducing our use of single-use products. Harrods Outdoor actively supports Ecosia, https://www.ecosia.org/, a search engine that funds the planting of trees across the planet to counter the effects of deforestation.

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